THE civilization of a nation is accurately
measured by its advancement in the useful arts and economic
industries of life. Upon these largely depend the production and
diffusion of wealth among its people, their trade and commerce with
other nations, and much of that needful comfort and that higher
refinement which make life at once enjoyable and desirable. It is
also through this channel—this attainment and advance in useful art
and industry—that a nation sends its creative influences far away to
other nations and contributes powerfully to the general progress and
civilization of the race. Of this potential influence of art and
industry, both at home and abroad, no better illustration can be
found in modern history than that furnished by the working and
industrial classes of Scotland. During the present century at least,
and for a large part of the preceding one. Scotland has been a busy
working-hive of industry, and of useful invention in many of the
most important arts. Vast coal-fields have been discovered and the
mineral resources of the country developed to an extent unknown to
former ages.

The growth of these great industries to their
present immense proportions has been very gradual from their small
beginnings nearly two centuries ago. They have, however, afforded
scope for the practical and inventive genius of the Scottish people,
and at the same time a wide field of employment for large numbers of
the laboring classes. While thousands of Scotsmen during these
centuries, finding their native land too narrow, have been going
abroad to seek useful occupation, other thousands have found new
doors for remunerative toil constantly opening before them at home
in coal- and iron-mining, in the manufacture of iron and steel, and
that vast development of steamship building which has made Scotland
to a good degree the builder of the navies of Great Britain and the
world. It is an interesting history that traces this development
from its early inception on the banks of the Forth and the Clyde and
among the rugged Highland hills. It is one which strongly suggests
that those picturesque scenes of beauty or of wild grandeur were not
created alone for the pencil of the artist and the pen of poet and
novelist, but with a deeper design, as being the inexhaustible
deposition of a material wealth that should give employment to
millions and send its richness around the globe.

In a valuable volume published by Mr. Samuel
Smiles in 1864, entitled Industrial Biography; or, Iron- Workers and
Tool-Makers, we have a sketch of the prominent men, both English and
Scottish, to whose genius and energy our present civilization is
largely indebted for the development of these great sources of
wealth and power. Many of them became from necessity inventors of
improved instruments of mining, manufacture and shipbuilding. As
such they are among the world's benefactors. Their implements and
improved machinery were no sooner tested by experiment than they
became the property of other nations, and became the factors of
useful industry in other lands. "The true epic of our time," says
Carlyle, "is not Arms and the Man, but Tools and the Man.---an
infinitely wider kind of epic."

In the manufacture of Scottish iron John Roebuck
may be placed first on the list of pioneers and discoverers. He was
not a native of Scotland, but of Sheffield, England, where his
father preceded him as a manufacturer of cutlery. He was, however,
educated in part at the University of Edinburgh, where he applied
himself to the study of medicine, and especially of chemistry; and
after graduating as a physician at Leyden, on the Continent, he
determined to devote his life to industrial pursuits and to make
Scotland the field of his operations. He first settled at
Birmingham, England, where for a while he pursued his medical
profession and also made some important inventions in the methods of
smelting iron and refining gold and silver, and then removed to the
neighborhood of Edinburgh, near which place he established works for
the preparation of vitriol on a large scale. There he also struck
out new branches of industry with much success. Having determined to
engage in the manufacture of iron, he formed a company for that
purpose, in which he was joined by a number of his friends, and made
choice of a suitable site for his works on the banks of the river
Carron, in Stirlingshire, where there was an abundant supply of
water and an inexhaustible supply of iron, coal and limestone in the
immediate neighborhood. There Dr. Roebuck planted the first
iron-works in Scotland. He brought from England a large number of
skilled workmen, who formed a nucleus of industry at Carron, where
their example and improved methods of working served to train the
native laborers in their art; and thus the business has been handed
down to the present day.

"The first furnace," says Mr. Smiles, "was blown
at Carron on the first day of January, 1760, and in the course of
the same year the Carron Iron-Works turned out fifteen hundred tons
of iron, then the whole annual produce of Scotland. Other furnaces
shortly after were erected on improved plans, and the production
steadily increased." Out of this successful enterprise of the Carron
works, Mr. Smiles tells us, "sprang, in a great measure, the Forth
and Clyde Canal, the first artificial navigation in Scotland."

While this Carron foundry was pursuing its career
of safe prosperity Dr. Roebuck's enterprise led him to embark in
coal-mining with the object of securing an improved supply of fuel
for his iron-works. Finding all existing machinery inadequate for
his purposes, Dr. Roebuck in 1768 became associated with James Watt,
a young mathematical-instrument maker of Glasgow, who had just
invented a steam-engine of great power. The latter at
Dr. Roebuck's request, joined him at the
extensive coal-mines at Boroughstones and set about the construction
of the engines. Dr. Roebuck, however, having sunk his whole
fortune and that of his wife in these public-spirited ventures, was
compelled to abandon all further schemes of improvement. "He lived,
however," says Mr. Smiles, "to witness the success of the
steam-engine, the opening of the Boroughstones coal, and the rapid
extension of the Scotch iron trade, though he shared in the
prosperity of neither of those branches of industry. He had been
working ahead of his age, and he suffered for it. He fell in the
breach at the critical moment, and more fortunate men marched over
his body into the fortress which his enterprise and valor had mainly
contributed to win. Before his great undertaking of the Carron
works, Scotland was entirely dependent upon other countries for its
supply of iron; in 1760, the first year of its operations, the whole
produce was fifteen hundred tons. In course of time other iron-works
were erected at Clyde, Cleugh-Muirkirk and Devon, the managers and
overseers of which, as well as the workmen, had mostly received
their training and experience at Carron, until at length the iron
trade of Scotland has assumed such a magnitude that its
manufacturers are enabled to export to England and other countries
upward of five hundred thousand tons a year. How different this
state of things from the time when raids were made across the Border
for the purpose of obtaining a store of iron plunder to be carried
back into Scotland!"

These great mining and manufacturing enterprises,
which had been so nobly undertaken and developed by this
indefatigable man during the last century, were carried to still
greater perfection by the inventive and mechanical genius of three
worthy successors, all Scotsmen, who rose to eminence in their
respective spheres during the present century. These were David
Mushet, born at Dalkeith, near Edinburgh, in 1772; James Beaumont
Neilson, born at Shettlestone, near Glasgow, in 1792; and James
Nasmyth, born in Edinburgh in 1808. To these, indeed, may be added a
fourth name equally distinguished for inventive genius and important
contributions not only to the manufacture of iron, but to bridge and
railway structures and to the building of iron-clad steamships. This
is William Fairbairn, who was born at Kelso in 1787.

Mr. Smiles says, "The extraordinary expansion of
the Scotch iron trade of late years has been mainly due to the
discovery by David Mushet of the black-band iron-stone in 1801, and
the invention of the hot blast by James Beaumont Neilson in 1828."
Mr. Mushet commenced his investigations and experiments at an early
age, while connected with the Clyde Iron-Works, near Glasgow. It was
while engaged in erecting for himself and partners the Calder
Iron-Works, in the same vicinity, that he made the discovery
(unsuspected before him) that the black-band stone was rich in
mineral, containing more than fifty per cent. of protoxide of iron.
"Yet that discovery," says Mr. Mushet, "has elevated Scotland to a
considerable rank among the iron-making nations of Europe, with
revenues still in store that may be considered inexhaustible." He
made many useful discoveries in connection with the hot-blast
furnace, the smelting of iron and manufacture of steel, and while he
lived was regarded as a leading authority on these subjects.

It was during his connection with the Glasgow
gas-works that Mr. Neilson made his first experiments in the
smelting of iron, and in 1828 he brought his wonderful discovery of
the hot-air process to perfection. Its success was extraordinary.
Mr. Mushet regarded it as one of the "most novel and beautiful
improvements of the age." Others spoke of it as being "of as great
advantage in the iron trade as Arkwright's machinery was in the
cotton-spinning trade." Mr. Fairbairn, in his article "Iron" in the
Encyclopcedia Britanica, says, "It has effected an entire revolution
in the iron industry of Great Britain, and forms the last era in the
history of this material." "The first trials of the process," says
Mr. Smiles, "were made at the blast-furnaces of Clyde and Calder,
from whence the use of the hot blast gradually extended to other
iron mining districts. In the course of a few years every furnace in
Scotland, with one exception (that of Carron), had adopted the
improvement ; while it was also employed in half the furnaces of
England and Wales, and in many of the furnaces on the Continent and
in America."

The utility of this valuable invention, both to
Scotland and to the world, is well illustrated by the following
paragraph from Mr. Smiles's volume: "The invention of the hot blast
in conjunction with the discovery of the black-band ironstone has
had an extraordinary effect upon the development of the iron
manufacture of Scotland. The coals of that country are generally
unfit for coking, and lose as much as fifty per cent. in the
process. But by using the hot blast the coal could be sent to the
blast-furnace in its raw state, by which a large saving of fuel is
effected. Even coals of an inferior quality were by its means
available for the manufacture of iron. But one of the peculiar
qualities of the black-band ironstone is that in many cases it
contains sufficient coaly matter for purposes of calcination without
any admixture of coal whatever. Before its discovery all the iron
manufactured in Scotland was made from clay-band, but the use of the
latter has in a great measure been discontinued wherever a
sufficient supply of black-band can be obtained. And it is found to
exist very extensively in most of the midland Scotch counties, the
coal and iron measures stretching in a broad belt from the Firth of
Forth to the Irish Channel at the Firth of Clyde. At the time when
the hot blast was invented the fortunes of many of the older works
were at a low ebb, and several of them had been discontinued; but
they were speedily brought to life again wherever black-band could
be found. In 1829, the year Neilson's patent was taken out, the
total make of Scotland was twenty-nine thousand tons. As fresh
discoveries of the mineral were made in Ayrshire and Lanarkshire new
works were erected, until in 1845 the production of Scottish
pig-iron had increased to four hundred and seventy-five thousand
tons. It has since increased to upward of a million of tons,
nineteen-twentieths of which are made from band ironstone. An
immense additional value has been given to all land in which it is
found. Employment has thus been given to vast numbers of our
industrial population, and the wealth and resources of the Scotch
iron districts have been increased to an extraordinary extent.
During the last year (1862) there were one hundred and twenty-five
furnaces in blast throughout Scotland, each employing about four
hundred men in making an average of two hundred tons a week; and the
money distributed amongst the workmen may readily be computed from
the fact that under the most favorable circumstances the cost of
making iron in wages alone amounts to thirty-six shillings a ton."

The third of these successful workers in iron,
James Nasmyth, belonged to a Scottish family several of whose
members were highly distinguished as artists. His father, Alexander
Nasmyth of Edinburgh, was a landscape-painter of great eminence. His
elder brother was an admirable portrait-painter. His sisters,
following the line of the father's genius, became highly
distinguished as landscape-painters, and their works were much
prized. James Nasmyth was himself an excellent painter. He had
received a sound and liberal education at the Edinburgh high school.
His taste for the mechanic arts was so strong, however, even from
early boyhood, that he determined to give himself to that line of
industry. By the time he was fifteen he could work and turn out
respectable jobs in wood, brass, iron and steel. At that age he made
a real working steam-engine, one three-fourths inch diameter and
eight-inch stroke, which not only could act, but did some useful
work, for he made it grind the oil-colors which his father required
for his painting. He found it both delightful and profitable at that
early age to make model steam-engines, which he sold at a good
price, and thus purchased tickets of admission to the course of
lectures on philosophy and chemistry at the university of his native
city.

Mr. Nasmyth was a man of profound intellect, and
his useful inventions in the iron manufacture were all suggested to
his original inquiring mind by the practical necessities of the
business. When an obstacle hitherto insurmountable met him, he at
once set himself to overcome it by creating a more powerful
instrument. Such was the history of his great steam-hammer.

Mr. Smiles says: "If Mr. Nasmyth had accomplished
nothing more than the invention of the steam-hammer, it would have
been enough to found a reputation. This invention is described by
Professor Tomlinson, in the Cyclopedia of Useful Arts, as 'one of
the most perfect of artificial machines, and one of the noblest
triumphs of mind over matter that modern English engineers have yet
developed.' When the use of iron extended and larger iron-work came
to be forged, for cannon, tools and machinery, the ordinary hand
hammer was found insufficient, and the helve or forge hammer was
invented. This was usually driven by a waterwheel or by oxen or
horses. The tilt-hammer was another form in which it was used, the
smaller kinds being worked by the foot. Among Watt's various
inventions was a tilt-hammer of considerable power, which he at
first worked by means of a waterwheel and afterward by a
steam-engine regulated by a fly-wheel. His first hammer of this kind
was a hundred and twenty pounds in weight; it was raised eight
inches before making each blow. Watt afterward made a tilt-hammer
for Mr. Wilkinson of Bradley Forge of seven and a half
hundredweight, and it made three hundred blows a minute. Other
improvements were made in the hammer from time to time, but no
material alteration was made in the power by which it was worked
until Mr. Nasmyth took it in hand, and, applying to it the force of
steam, at once provided the worker in iron with one of the most
formidable of machine tools."

Farther on in his interesting volume Mr. Smiles
describes the inauguration of this wonder-working instrument whose
mighty tread has now been heard in all iron-producing countries:
"The first hammer of thirty hundredweight was made for Patricott
Works with the consent of the partners, and in the course of a few
weeks it was in full work. The precision and beauty of its action,
the perfect ease with which it was managed and the untiring force of
its percussive blows were the admiration of all who saw it, and from
that moment the steam-hammer became a recognized power in modern
mechanics. The variety and gradation of its blows were such that it
was found practicable to manipulate a hammer of ten tons as easily
as if it had only been of ten ounces weight. It was under such
complete control that while descending with its greatest momentum it
could be arrested at any point with even greater ease than any
instrument used by hand. While capable of forging an Armstrong
hundred pounder or the sheet anchor for a ship-of-the-line, it could
hammer a nail, or crack a nut without bruising the kernel. Its
advantages were so obvious that its adoption soon became general,
and in the course of a few years Nasmyth steam-hammers were to be
found in every well-appointed workshop, both at home and abroad."

Mr. Nasmyth, after making an adequate fortune by
his industry and inventions in the iron manufacture, retired from
active business in i86, and devoted his later years to the study of
astronomy and other branches of science. He was a practical
discoverer in this new field, and became almost as much
distinguished as an astronomer as he had been as an engineer and
inventor. By new telescopes of great power, constructed by himself,
he instituted a series of observations on the crater of the moon,
and also on the surface and spots of the sun, which resulted in some
remarkable discoveries. These, when first published in the
scientific journals of the time, seemed almost incredible, but they
were afterward confirmed by the observations of other scientists and
fully recognized by Sir John Herschel and other eminent astronomers.

An interesting story is related by the author
from whom most of these facts are taken as to the origin of the
unusual name of this Scottish family. It goes back to the time of
the old feuds between the kings of Scotland and their powerful
subjects the earls of Douglas. On one occasion a rencounter took
place near a border village, in which the king': adherents were
worsted. Taking refuge in the village smithy, one of them hastily
disguised himself and, donning a spare leathern apron, pretended to
be engaged in assisting the smith at his work. A party of the
Douglas men soon rushed in, and, glancing at the pretended workman
at the anvil, they saw him strike a blow so unskillfully that the
hammer-shaft broke in his hand. On this one of the Douglas followers
rushed at him, calling out, "Ye're nae smyth." The assailed man,
seizing his sword, which lay conveniently near, defended himself so
vigorously that he soon killed his assailant, while the smith
brained another with his hammer. A party of the king's men having
come to their help, the rest were speedily overpowered. The royal
forces then rallied, and their temporary defeat was converted into a
victory. The king bestowed a grant of land on his follower "naesmyth,"
who assumed for his arms a sword between two hammers with broken
shafts, and the motto, "Non Arte sed Marte," as if to disclaim the
art of the smith, in which he had failed, and to emphasize the
superiority of the warrior, in which capacity he had excelled.

"Such," adds Mr. Smiles,'"is said to be the
traditional origin of the family of Naesmyth of Posso, in
Peeblesshire, who continue to bear the same name and arms. It is
remarkable that the inventor of the steam-hammer should have so
effectually contradicted the name he bears and reversed the motto of
his family; for, so far from being `nae smyth,' he may not
inappropriately be designated the very Vulcan of the nineteenth
century. His hammer is a tool of immense power and pliancy but for
which we must have stopped short in many of those gigantic
engineering works which are among the marvels of the age we live in.
It possesses so much precision and delicacy that it will clip the
end of an egg resting in a glass on the anvil without breaking it,
while it delivers a blow of ten tons with such a force as to be felt
shaking the parish. It is therefore with a high degree of
appropriateness that Mr. Nasmyth has discarded the feckless hammer
with the broken shaft, and assumed for his emblem his own
magnificent steam-hammer, at the same time reversing the family
motto, which he has converted into `Non Marte sed Arte.'"

The author closes his fine sketch of this gifted
man and truly representative North Briton of our period by telling
us that some two hundred years ago a member of the Nasmyth family,
Jean Nasmyth of Hamilton, was burnt for a witch—one of the last
martyrs to ignorance and superstition in Scotland—because she read
her Bible with two pairs of spectacles. "Had Mr. Nasmyth himself
lived then, he might with his two telescopes of his own making,
which bring the sun and the moon into his chamber for him to examine
and paint, have been taken for a sorcerer; but, fortunately for him,
and still more so for us, Mr. Nasmyth stands before the public of
this age as not only one of its ablest mechanics, but as one of the
most accomplished and original of scientific observers."

One of the most influential and successful of the
mechanical engineers of the present century was William Fairbairn,
who from humble beginnings worked his way up to the highest
distinction. He was of Scottish birth and training and to a great
degree self-educated, but, like many of his countrymen, his life was
largely spent in England, where many of his useful experiments and
improvements were made. Finding no opening for employment in his
native land, he tried in turn to gain a foothold in London, Dublin,
Newcastle and other places, and at last established himself at
Manchester, where he spent his life. Here he became the head of a
business firm for the construction of bridges, mills, iron
buildings, and iron machinery in general, which eventually became
known all over the civilized world. He was the builder of the first
iron house erected in England, and his wonderful improvements in the
structure of mills and water-wheels led to an entire revolution in
that line of industry. "His improvements formed an era in the
history of mill-machinery, and exercised the most important
influence on the development of the cotton, flax, silk and other
branches of manufacture."

"His labors," says Mr. Smiles, "were not,
however, confined to his own particular calling as a mill-engineer,
but were shortly directed to other equally important branches of the
constructive art. He was among the first to direct his attention to
iron-ship building as a special branch of business." Having
satisfied himself by experiments, Mr. Fairbairn in 1831 proceeded to
construct at his works, at Manchester, an iron vessel, which went to
sea the same year. "Its success was such as to induce him to begin
iron-ship building on a large scale at the same time as the Messrs.
Laird did at Birkenhead, and, in 1835, Mr. Fairbairn established
extensive works at Mill-wall, on the Thames—afterward occupied by
Mr. Scott Russell, in whose yard the Great Eastern steamship was
erected—where, in the course of some fourteen years, he built more
than a hundred and twenty iron ships, some of them above two
thousand tons burden. It was, in fact, the first great iron-ship
building yard in Britain, and led the way in a branch of the
business which has since become of first-rate magnitude and
importance. Mr. Fairbairn was a most laborious experimenter in iron,
and investigated in great detail the subject of its strength, the
value of different kinds of riveted joints compared with the solid
plates, and the distribution of the material throughout the
structure, as well as the form of the vessel itself. It would,
indeed, be difficult to overestimate the value of his investigations
on these points in the earlier stages of this now highly important
branch of the national industry."

Mr. Fairbairn's practical and experimental
knowledge of all matters connected with the qualities and strength
of iron, and his great authority derived from many successful
discoveries and inventions in the manufacture and use of it, led the
British government to seek information from his inquiries as to the
construction of iron-plated vessels of war. His thorough knowledge
of wrought iron in all its applications naturally led to his being
called in as a counselor by Robert Stevenson when it was proposed to
span the estuary of the Conway and the Straits of Menai by an iron
structure. The results were the world-renowned Conway and Britannia
tubular bridges. "There is no reason to doubt," says Mr. Smiles,
"that by far the largest share of the merit of working out the
practical details of those structures, and thus realizing Robert
Stevenson's magnificent idea of the tubular bridge, belonged to Mr.
Fairbairn."

There can be no question that iron has played an
important part in the progress of civilization, and it is easy to
see from these and other records that Scotsmen have played no
inconsiderable part in that progress, whether it regards the
discovery, the manufacture or the application of iron to the great
industrial arts. "The mechanical operations of the present day,"
says Mr. Fairbairn, "could not have been accomplished at any cost
thirty years ago, and what was then considered impossible is now
performed with an exactitude that never fails to accomplish the end
in view." "We are daily producing from the bowels of the earth,"
says Mr. Stevenson, "a raw material in its crude state apparently of
no worth, but which when converted into a locomotive-engine flies
over bridges of the same material with a speed exceeding that of the
bird, advancing wealth and comfort throughout the country. Such are
the powers of that all-civilizing instrument iron." One of the
marvels of the age in which we live is this diversified and almost
universal application of iron to the industries and the arts of
life. Since the advent of these great iron discoverers and inventors
the world has assumed a new aspect unknown to former history,
unimagined in poetry or fiction. The continents are belted by
railroad iron. The surface of every ocean is ploughed by iron-clad
steamers, and their silent ocean-beds feel the pressure of electric
wires carrying intelligence from shore to shore. "Since then," wrote
Mr. Smiles twenty years ago, "iron structures of all kinds have been
erected—iron lighthouses, iron-and-crystal palaces, iron churches
and iron bridges. Iron roads have long been worked by iron
locomotives, and before many years have passed a telegraph of iron
wire will probably be found circling the globe. We now use iron
roofs, iron bedsteads, iron ropes and iron pavement, and even the
famous wooden walls of England are rapidly becoming reconstructed of
iron. In short, we are in the midst of what Mr. Worsaae has
characterized as the Age of Iron."

Another great industry of Scotland, which during
the present century has grown into national importance and sent its
influences around the globe, is that of shipbuilding and
steam-navigation. It may be ranked next to the earlier and more
widely ramified industries of coal and iron, with which, in fact, it
is closely connected. It has its principal centre of operation on
the river Clyde, near and below Glasgow. It has contributed largely
to the development of this Western metropolis and made it, along
with other influences, one of the chief commercial and industrial
centres of Great Britain. "Situated in a district rich in coal and
iron, Nature gave to Glasgow splendid opportunities for wealth and
power, and its energetic inhabitants have known how to use them. In
1871 the city had reached a population of five hundred and
forty-seven thousand five hundred and forty-eight, with two millions
of spindles in its great cotton-mills and an annual consumption of a
hundred and twenty thousand bales of cotton. In addition to its
extensive manufactories for iron, cotton, glass and chemicals, it is
the centre of the tobacco trade, the sugar trade and the cotton
trade, while its vast industry, expended in the construction of
steam- and iron-clad ships for Great Britain and other nations, has
raised it to an industrial position surpassed by that of no other
city in the world. It has been appropriately styled the metropolis
of industry and commerce, whose merchants are princes, whose
traffickers are the honorable of the earth."

In 1811 the first steam-vessel was built on the
Clyde by Henry Bell, and the next year began to run on that river
between Glasgow and Greenock at the rate of five miles an hour
against a strong head-wind. Although our own countryman Robert
Fulton had antedated this a few years by his successful navigation
of the Hudson between New York and Albany in 1807, yet the Clyde may
well be regarded as the cradle of steam-navigation. The Clyde, if it
did not take the lead in point of time, has unquestionably done more
for marine architecture than any other river in the world. This once
tortuous little stream, "full of rock-beds, fords and shallows," has
been deepened and widened by an outlay of energy, and capital and
engineering skill bestowed on no other river, until it has become
"one of the noblest highways of commerce in the world, adapted to
all the exigences and ends of navigation." Here since 1811 have been
completed all those important practical inventions and improvements
which have brought the art of shipbuilding to its present vast
proportions and its almost perfect facilities. Says SIr. J. S.
Jeans, writing for the Practical Magazine of 1874: "No inventions
connected with or affecting marine architecture are at all
comparable with those of the initial application of steam to
navigation, the construction of ships of iron, the use of the
screw-propeller, and the substitution of compound for other engines.
In each of these leading and essential stages of improvement the
Clyde stands out more conspicuously than any other river. The 'Clyde
clippers' are known all over the world. The value of the vessels
built on the Clyde in the last ten years is the colossal sum of
forty millions of pounds sterling. At the present time there are
upward of thirty separate ship-building establishments on the Clyde
between Rutherglen and Greenock, both inclusive. The largest and
oldest of these are the yards of John Elder, Robert Napier, Barcklay
& Carle, Tod & Macgregor, Alexander Stephenson & Son."

The time when the first steamship crossed the
Atlantic was in 1819. It was the Savannah, built on the Clyde, and
took twenty-six days for the voyage. In 1835, Dr. Lardner in a
public scientific lecture proclaimed the impossibility of Atlantic
navigation by steam in consequence of its too costly consumption of
fuel. Yet in 1839 the Great Western—another vessel built on the
Clyde—had made the outward and the home voyages so successfully as
to time and cost as to demonstrate the feasibility of ocean
steam.-navigation by practically inaugurating it. Now great lines of
steamers are ploughing every ocean and connecting all the
continents. While steam-vessels are now constructed on the Mersey
and at other places in Great Britain and Continental Europe, and
also in our own country, the Clyde still holds its supremacy in
shipbuilding. In 1874 there were nine hundred vessels belonging to
the port of Glasgow, with a tonnage of five hundred thousand tons.
All the largest steamers of the old Cunard company, ranging from two
thousand to four thousand tons burden, are built on the Clyde, and
all the leading ship companies in the world have many of their best
vessels built here. For many miles the Clyde is a great forest of
masts and smokestacks, while both banks of the river form continuous
lines of workshops, forges, furnaces, ship-docks and yards, giving
employrnent to not less than fifty thousand operatives.

Mr. Jeans, from whose valuable article in the
Practical Magazine most of these facts are taken, gives us the
following description of the busy scene which greets the eye of a
visitor to the Clyde: "There is no more interesting sight to one
impressed with the importance of the industrial arts than a voyage
down the Clyde. Strangers, as a rule, are totally unprepared for the
wonderful display of industrial activity which they witness on all
sides in their course between Glasgow and Greenock. Immediately
after leaving the Broomielaw the thud of the ponderous steam-hammer,
the clan; of the ship- and boiler-plates under manipulation, the
quick and intermittent noise of the riveters, the harsh and grating
sound of the sawyers, and many other forms and combinations of the
music of labor, strike upon the ear. A little farther down and the
Babel of sound becomes still louder, harsher and more confusing. In
quick succession the voyageur passes on the one side the works of
the London and Glasgow Shipbuilding Company, of R. Napier & Sons, of
John Elder & Co. and of Alexander Stephenson & Sons, while on the
other are the works of Barclay, Carle & Co., Messrs. A. & J. Inglis,
Tod & Macgregor, Thomas Wingate, CharIes Connel & Co. and Messrs.
Aitkin & MIansel. After having run the gauntlet of these
establishments, there is an interval of green fields and
finely-timbered hang/its, in passing through which a grateful repose
is enjoyed, although it is still possible to hear, fainter and yet
more faint, the cadences of the busy scene through which we have
just passed. A little farther on and we reach Renfrew, where Messrs.
W. Simons & Co. and Messrs. Henderson & Coulborn carry on large
works; and on the opposite shore we next reach Dumbarton, famous in
the days of yore for its wooden argosies, but now rivaling any port
on the Clyde with the extensive and well-equipped shipbuilding works
of Messrs. Denny Brothers and Messrs. A. McMillan & Co. From this
point the charming beauties of the Clyde begin to unfold themselves,
and serve to fascinate the mind and lead contemplation into other
channels, until once again the indulgence of aesthetic taste is
diverted by the industrial aspects of Port GIasgow and Greenock,
where some of the oldest shipbuilding yards on the Clyde may be seen
in active operation. The whole journey is fraught with bewilderment
and wonder. Strangers are not always prepared for the fact that the
CIyde, which is known far and near as one of the most beautiful of
rivers, should at the same time be so distinguished for active and
prosperous industry."

The man to whose mechanical genius and public
spirit all these vast works on the Clyde are probably more indebted
for their present stage of advancement than to any one else was
Robert Napier. There were earlier engineers and discoverers, as
Watt, Bell and Wilson, who opened the way by their inventive skill
for what was to follow. In more recent times no one has done more to
develop resources and lead the way to success in new paths than Mr.
Napier. He was born at Dumbarton, twelve miles from Glasgow, in
1791. His father was a blacksmith and he served his apprenticeship
in the father's shop, showing early such aptness for the trade that
it was pithily remarked that the boy was "born with a hammer in his
hand." He acquired in early life both a practical and a theoretical
knowledge of everything connected with shipbuilding, and his name is
intimately associated with all those great improvements which have
given to the Clyde its pre-eminence in that line of industry.
Besides his mechanical and constructive ability, Mr. Napier showed
through his successful career an organizing and administrative
capacity which made him the worthy compeer of such eminent
architects and builders as Mr. Reed, the chief constructor of the
navy, and Mr. John Laird, the greatest constructor of iron vessels
in the world. As early as 1818, Mr. Robert Wilson had built a small
vessel of iron to run as a passenger-boat in the Forth and Clyde
Canal, and this was probably the first iron vessel constructed. In
1829, Mr. John Laird of Birkenhead constructed at his works on the
Mersey, near Liverpool, the first iron ship—the precursor of more
than four hundred great iron ships which he lived to see finished at
those famous works. To Mr. Laird's remarkable genius must be
accorded the distinction of introducing that important change from
wood to iron in the art of shipbuilding which in our time has turned
the wooden walls of Britain into walls of iron and steel, and has
remodeled to an indefinite degree the navies of all the great
nations of the world.

Mr. Napier's work on the Clyde was different, but
certainly not less useful and important in its influence on the arts
of peaceful industry and the progress of human civilization. In the
year 1840 he projected and built at his works on the Clyde, for Sir
Samuel Cunard, the first four steamers of the now famous Cunard
line. These were the Britannica, the Arcadia, the Caledonia and the
Columbia, all ranging between one and two thousand tons burden. They
crossed the Atlantic in a voyage of about two weeks, and thus
inaugurated those regular lines of steamers which have since become
numerous on all the great seas and oceans. For some years Mr. Napier
supplied all the vessels of this Cunard line, though in more recent
times the chief contractors of this line have been James & G.
Thompson at Dumbarton.

During the last ten years great advances have
been made in the construction of these floating palaces of the
ocean, some of them reaching a capacity of six thousand tons and a
velocity that impels them across the Atlantic in seven or eight
days. But the influence of Mr. Napier's successful pioneering on the
first great line is well illustrated by the following paragraph from
a sketch of his life in the Practical Magazine of 1874: "It is now
conceded on all hands that the Cunard steam fleet is the finest in
the world, and the operations of the company have been successful
beyond all precedent. The company possesses at the present time
between forty and fifty vessels afloat or in process of
construction. Some of their ships are over four thousand tons
burden, and the aggregate of the whole is about ninety thousand
tons. Some idea of the capital invested in this magnificent fleet
may be gathered from the fact that the average cost of the
construction and equipment of a Cunard liner is one hundred thousand
pounds sterling. The exemption of this line from misadventure is not
only beyond all precedent, but is also among the greatest phenomena
of the shipping trade. For upward of thirty years a Cunard liner has
sailed from Liverpool to New York, at first once a week, then twice
a week, and more recently three times a week, while the same number
have been run from New York to Liverpool. But the Cunard captains
appear to have mastered the domain of old Neptune, for during all
that long period they have never lost either a life or a letter."

Mr. Napier received from time to time high honors,
from both Great Britain and other countries, in recognition of the
eminent services he had rendered to steam-navigation. He had won
them fairly, and no man of our day deserves them better. At the
Paris Exhibition of 1855 he received the prize of a great gold medal
and was made "chevalier of the Legion of Honor." In 1862 and 1865
similar prizes were awarded him in London and Paris. In 1869 he
received from the king of Denmark the honor of a "commander of the
Most Ancient Order of the Danneborg." In 1874, Mr. Napier had
retired from active business and was living in comfort and elegance
in his noble residence on the banks of the Garelock.

The facts brought to view in this chapter are
sufficient to illustrate what part Scotland has borne in the
development of some of the most important arts and industries in the
world. The Scottish people have been no laggards in the chase for
wealth and fortune, no mere spectators in the race of improvement
and distinction. Their lot has been cast in a small and
comparatively rugged land, where nothing less than hard work and
untiring industry could win the prizes of affluence and honor. But
such as it was they have accepted it and made the most of the
situation. They have made many a forbidding nook and corner to yield
its hidden riches and to blossom as the rose. When hard work and
industry could make those talents productive, they have never been
content to lay up in a napkin the one talent or the five talents
that - God has given. Nor have they been content with simply
improving their own country and increasing their own stores: much
that they have done has contributed largely to the increase of other
lands and to the general advancement of our highest civilization.
They have not been slow to follow others when others have first
found a better way, but, as we have seen in these pages, they have
themselves oftentimes been the earliest pioneers of progress. In the
great industries of coal-mining, iron-manufacture, shipbuilding and
steam-navigation, from the days of Watt and Roebuck to those of
Bell, Wilson, Nasmyth and Napier, they have been the a wat couriers
that led the march of the whole world's progress. The sound of their
great hammers of industry has gone out through all the nations, and
their globe-encircling lines of ocean-steamers are helping to
fulfill the ancient prophecy—that "many shall run to and fro and
knowledge shall be increased."

In working out the problem of national greatness,
and the wider problem of Christian civilization, art and industry
are factors not to be despised. They have always held an essential
place, and they hold it still. Every great improvement achieved by
art and industry, wherever made, is a gain for the gospel of truth
and a step in advance toward the final triumph of Christianity. By
these labor becomes power and wages become productive capital.
Skilled labor in the hands of thrifty, competent, industrious
artisans is one of the unfailing sources of national prosperity and
one of the surest indications of an advancing civilization. "Our
strength, wealth and commerce," said Mr. Cobden, " grow out of the
skilled labor of the men working in metals." Estimated by the
standard of this eminent statesman, it is easy to see that the fifty
thousand skilled laborers on the Clyde, and the uncounted thousands
of equally skilled artisans in all other departments of Scottish
industry in every part of the land, are not laboring in vain, but
contributing their full share of influence toward the complete and
final consummation. As we speed the plough and speed the hammer,
speed the steam-car and speed the steamship, in every clime, beneath
every sky, by night and by day, we are but speeding the gospel with
the sun and preparing for that long-expected time when the
tabernacle of God shall be with men and the whole world be filled
with the glory of the Lord even as the waters cover the great deep.
No true service is in vain, no productive energy is wasted, no step
of progress is lost. All great and true work everywhere is so much
gained for God and man, and goes to form the coming time and the
coming world—that "new heavens and new earth wherein dwelleth
righteousness."

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